April 12th, 2015

Security:

Subject:

My suggestion for the Hugos...

Time:

06:09 pm

...won't be popular.

Con committees presumably get to decide how the awards ceremony will be presented. If there is evidence that the award is being debased by the tactics we've seen, maybe they should minimalise their involvement to preserve the reputation of the convention. No speeches, no music, nobody going up to collect in person. Just a factual announcement of the winners, and notice that they can collect their awards from the green room afterwards. I'm pretty sure you could get the lot done well inside a one-hour program slot, and starving the idiots of whatever satisfaction they get out of a public victory for a year or two might teach them a small lesson. And the money saved could be spent on the rest of the programme.

Thoughts?

later - just to make this clear, I'd suggest doing this regardless of who seems likely to win, downsizing the ceremony only if the Poopies win would be as unfair, in its own way, as their initial tactics.

Yeah. I think, to be honest, they're just a few hundred of the worst Gamergater type arseholes on the internet, and they're so filled with bile and hatred for everybody that isn't just like them, that there's really no point in even trying to reason with them.

Calculated rudeness toward winners because one voted for someone else is a very poor precedent to set, and far from protecting the dignity of the Hugos, will probably sink what's left of their reputation.

I have no idea how you get out of this once you start doing it, which is why it isn't a perfect plan - I never said it was. I suspect that after one or two years of spending a lot of money and losing most of the publicity and ego-boo associated with the award there might be less enthusiasm for gaming the awards.

It would certainly avoid the unpleasantness likely at the ceremony now. But it would have to apply to all awards, as if 2015 did not count in any category, and that would be unfair for the unpolluted categories.